A conferencing system comprises a central unit, connected with several delegate units for the participating delegates. The central unit serves to combine audio channels of various delegate units and to distribute the received audio and data channel and combinations of these channels.
A team of interpreters provides translation for the conference participants. This will typically take the form of simultaneous interpretation. Interpreters will usually have a so-called ‘interpreter desk’ to assist them in performing their work. This unit provides an interface that allows the interpreters to select the incoming language of their choice as well as the language into which they will be interpreting. The language out of which the interpreter interprets, is referred to as the ‘relay language’. For this purpose, the interpreter desk comprises a number of relay buttons, often equipped with an LED indicator. These buttons can be easily programmed when going through the list of available languages. The interpreter desk contains a display, for example an LCD display, on which relevant information can be shown, for example, the quality of the relay languages (i.e. the number of subsequent translations), output channels or other additional information.
A special input channel is the floor channel of the conferencing system, i.e., the language that is being spoken on the conference floor at that moment. If this is a language that the interpreter does not master, the interpreter is unable to directly use the floor channel signal. The interpreter then has to rely on a translation of the language of the floor channel. In addition to, for example, an indication of the incoming languages, a relevant piece of information for the interpreter may consist of an indication of the quality of the translation. This will usually be done using a qualifier, such as, +, ++, +++ or FL, −1, −2; where ‘FL’ stands for ‘floor language’, i.e., the language that is being spoken on the conference floor at that moment. In this way, it is possible for interpreters to distinguish between direct and indirect translation, and indirect translations can easily be avoided as much as possible.
Prior art interpreting desk systems offer limited feedback capabilities for the interpreter. The interpreter desks currently on the market typically have an LCD screen with limited capabilities so that typically only textual feedback is possible, for example on the quality of the defined channels in the interpreter system. This does not always make it possible to see the situation in a conference room at a glance, which can lead to errors. In addition, there is typically no indication as to a number of statistics that may indeed be important for the proper functioning of an interpreter (e.g. the amount of time spoken by an interpreter, the number of listeners listening to the interpreter, whether a particular channel is recorded or an indication of who is active on a particular channel).
More specifically, the present invention relates to the delivery of feedback information to the interpreters, so they have a better view of the actual working conditions in which they find themselves. As explained above, these possibilities are after all not or only to a very limited extent present in the current state of the art.
There is thus a need for a conferencing system which makes it possible to supply more detailed feedback information to interpreters than that which interpreters receive today.